Fast Company April 2017

A few weeks ago, I got a LinkedIn message from Kat Lisciani, host of the Millennial Innovators podcast. She was asking how to pronounce my last name, wanting to cite an editor’s letter of mine in an episode. I’ve just listened to the episode, which begins with an endorsement of my assertion that “business is the driving force for progress in our culture.” It’s quite flattering. Yet by the end, Lisciani is challenging me. Corporations have a role to play, she contends, but in the current environment, “all hope for the future rests on . . . the individual, the citizen.” I couldn’t agree more. But I don’t think these positions are actually at odds. Because while corporations are limited by their culture, structure, and rules, they are ultimately composed of…

Updates from the MIC alumni Farfetch CEO José Neves founded his nineyear- old company with a mission to bridge the gap between physical and digital by helping luxury boutiques around the world put their inventory online. This month, Farfetch will host an event called FarfetchOS, in London, where Neves will announce a new technology suite called the Store of the Future, the latest business unit for the $1 billion company. The new concept will allow Farfetch’s partner retailers to track inventory across their e-commerce and storefront arms and help further individualize inperson customer interactions. “We actually see the future of fashion as centered in the physical store, which I know is ironic for a tech business,” Neves says. “I really believe that beautiful products belong in great stores. They don’t belong in…

CMO, IBM What's new with members of our MCP community Previously the CEO of Gilt Groupe, which was acquired by Hudson’s Bay Company last year, Michelle Peluso was named IBM’s chief marketing officer in October. Peluso, whose résumé also includes stints as CEO of Travelocity and global CMO of Citigroup, is now tapping into her consumer expertise to promote IBM’s cloud and Watson cognitive technologies. “This might be counterintuitive,” she says, “but I think of us as a challenger brand. We’re at an interesting junction where B2B and B2C have blended. Expectations users have of technology and interactions with companies have shifted.” One of Peluso’s goals is to apply lessons from her last job to IBM’s culture. “At Gilt, you had designers, data scientists, marketers, and models coming together—the intensity of the left-…

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MAX BARENBRUG knows how to get around. Growing up in the Netherlands, he spent much of his free time in his family’s garage, wrenching on bicycles, motorcycles, and cars. As a design student in Amsterdam, he focused on mobility—a suddenly trendy word that describes our ceaseless quest to find better, smarter, and more sustainable ways to move ourselves and the things that we care about. In 1994, Barenbrug’s vision of a better baby stroller—the idea that would, less than five years later, form the foundation of the multimillion-dollar global brand that we now know as Bugaboo—was conceived as a project for his graduation from the Design Academy Eindhoven. It’s not a surprise that Barenbrug’s approach was rigorous. The signature elements of the Bugaboo design—modularity mixed with style—disrupted the stroller industry entirely.…

At 7:30 a.m. on January 3, as most workers were just returning to their jobs after the holidays, Donald Trump picked up his phone and fired a virtual cannonball at America’s largest automaker. “General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border,” he tweeted. “Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!” Trump’s threat was quickly shared or liked nearly 100,000 times on Twitter, and soon dominated the news. GM’s stock dropped in premarket trading. “I had been in my office for barely 40 minutes after the New Year, and all of a sudden my day went whoooosh,” recalls a source familiar with the situation at GM. “The question was, How should [the company] react?” There was no perfect solution. Part of the problem…